The art of roping of animals on ranches for the purposes of counting, medical treatment, and general handling has developed into various sports involving horse mounted individuals roping running animals in the quickest possible manner. Practice of the sport is problematic as a limited number of live animals are available, and repetitive roping of them imparts cumulative stress to the animal. Consequently, many efforts have been made to build mechanical apparatuses to allow practice of roping skills. The simplest of these consist merely of a non-moving roping target that simulates a target animal, or sometimes just the head of a target animal. More sophisticated solutions to the need use a construction that simulates a target animal and is towed by some means such that the horse mounted roper must pursue the moving target and cast the rope about the target while moving. Finding a suitable means of towing the target is a considerable challenge as evidenced by the many schemes that have been patented.